Swimming in a well

Gangavati Pranesh had a new follower. My grandfather seemed to have become a regular viewer of his stand-up comedy shows. Pranesh’s North Karnataka accent and dialogue-delivery style appealed greatly to him. He could relate to Pranesh as they seemed to share similar backgrounds.

“I learnt how to swim in a well”, he exclaimed. My eyes widened and I naively said that would have been impossible as wells are not big enough to swim in.

“The wells in farms are quite big”, he explained. “We were never trained to swim. We were straight away thrown into the well and we had to swim to the edge and climb up the stairs. Bullocks in the field were used to pull moti, which is a leather sack, using a pulley to draw water from the well.”

I was appalled at his statement. How could they not be trained and were expected to swim?!

“What about floats?”, I asked.

“We used dried bottle gourd and dried pumpkins as floats. We tied these around our waists but that wasn’t very frequently.”

“In my initial days of learning, I was very young and swam naked. The coolies who were teaching me threw me in the well and I was so petrified that I got out of the well and began to run towards the village, away from the well. One of the coolies ran after me but I was quick. I had almost reached the village when I realised that I was naked and was highly embarrassed. Finally, the coolie caught up with me and dragged me back to the well. Only after he ensured that I swam a couple more times, he handed me my clothes”, he guffawed.

This incident still amuses him every time he recollects it.

My lifestyle is so different in contrast to his. My cousin Shridhar and I were trained at Basavangudi Aquatic Centre (BAC) in Bangalore when I was about 9 years old and he was probably 11 or 12. It was a very structured program. We were accompanied by my mother who sat by the pool waiting for us to get done with our class. Later, she gave us energy drinks to replenish ourselves.

I am indeed very fortunate to be born in a well-to-do family with such loving people. I am ever so grateful for that. That being said, I believe that my grandpa’s childhood was quite fascinating. I wonder if he ever felt that his childhood was stripped away from him by a single incident which brought on a lot of responsibilities on his shoulder. At such a tender age, he was required to look after his siblings while his father worked elsewhere.